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Category: Beauty

Cyborg Beauty

From the New York Times Style section:

Shifts of taste and style are trivialities, of course, without any serious meaning. But they do perform one important function, as Proust pointed out: they notch our hours and moments and decades and leave us with visual mnemonics, clues by which to remember where and in which dress and what jeans (and wearing what cologne) one was at a particular time. Tracking the way styles evolve gives us insight, too, into the forms of beauty we choose to idealize.

Models who were vacant optimistic cheerleader types prevailed in the politically clueless 1970s (Christie Brinkley, Patti Hansen, Shelley Hack); brooding brunettes took over during the Age of Reagan (Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and Yasmeen Ghauri); and off-kilter aristocratic types (Guinevere van Seenus, Stella Tennant, Erin O’Connor), emblematic of upper class women, came to the fore during the second Bush imperium.

What fashion now prefers as a beauty ideal is another type, the robot, personified by the stunning Raquel Zimmerman, a blond Brazilian of German heritage whose physical proportions are so symmetrical that many designers use her body as a template. That Ms. Zimmerman also has a kind of vacant cyborg aspect cannot be altogether incidental. Possibly this is the reason why Louis Vuitton hired her for a new ad campaign in which her face has been made up and manipulated so aggressively as to render her less humanly expressive than Lara Croft.

Elsewhere in the article, the author discusses the latest trends for men: unshaven faces, casual sweater-vests and no-name thrift-shop jeans. Just compare the impages on page 1 and page 2 (I would upload them now, but I’m on a dreadfully slow computer).

They get to be chic in beards, long frizzy hair, potbellies, and $2 jeans. We’re fashionable when we look like less-than-human, perfectly symmetrical (and perfectly put together) cyborgs. They get musicians, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, Allen Ginsberg, India. We get robots and Louis Vuitton.

They define music, art, travel — and get to draw from all of these things in their physical exhibition of their complex identities. The beards, the Chucks, the skinny jeans, the $50 vintage t-shirt — these aren’t frivolities when the dudes do it, it’s part of hipster culture. It’s meaningful in a way that’s separate from simple consumerism, that isn’t about these men’s bodies being used as showcases — these men are the whole show, baby. Their fashion represents them, and they are the artists, the movers and shakers, the writers, the creative types, the people who set the standards and whose cool the fashion industry tries to catch on to (and they totally don’t care about fashion). They don’t stand in to represent a generation; they are the generation.

We get pigeonholed by decade, our faces and bodies spoken about as defining objects, as if Linda Evangelista is kind of like a piece of the Berlin wall. The dumb happy blonde, the serious brunette, the unstable and indulged debutante: How better to visually demonstrate political cluelessness, oppressive conservatism, and imperialist wars waged on behalf of big oil companies?

But I’ll stop while I’m ahead. I need to go practice my vacant cyborg look in the mirror.

Grannies Gone Wild

I’m hestitant to wade into the pornography wars, but this article should give all of us more than a little bit to cringe about.

Yes, it’s about the latest “fetish” — women over the age of 40, doin’ it on camera. And, from the way the article reads, doing it for male viewers and to make a whole lot of money for male directors and male-owned production companies. All to the shock and dismay of the people who believe “female” to be synonymous with white, blonde, thin and young.

“It was weird to me,” he said. “She could be my mom. At first I thought it would blow over and that maybe no one would hire her. But then people started hiring her, and then they wanted her for magazines. It’s crazy. This is supposed to be an industry with the youngest, newest, most beautiful girls in the world. Isn’t youth what everyone wants?”

Emphasis on the word “newest.”

Read More…Read More…

What’s wrong with princesses?

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with “Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her “princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, “I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

“Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?”

Read the whole article.

She writes about the difficulties in raising her daughter in a culture that still constructs childhood along a clear gender binary — but one in which “female” not only means pink and princesses, but ambition and success, too. We rightly celebrate feminist milestones, like the fact that more girls are playing sports, that most colleges are at least 50% female, that medical and law schools have more female applicants than male applicants, that high-school girls are more highly-achieving than ever. The problem, though, is that these girls are loaded with the burden of not only being as successful and ambitious as their male peers, but looking and acting perfect while they do it. I look back at the girls in high school who were the Homecoming and Prom queens and princesses, and they epitomize this pressure: a single girl would be a two-sport athlete, a cheerleader, a club president, a member of Honor Society, and preparing to head off to a good four-year college. And sweet. And beautiful. I wasn’t exactly one of those girls (I was too mean), but I can certainly relate to the pressures of having to do well academically while being self-effacing and feminine enough to not come off as threatening. It’s exhausting. It takes a whole lot of effort, and a fair amount of money, too — because femininity is more of an achievement than a natural state, and it takes products and processes and little rituals and repeated denials and lots of work, on top of the “real” work of getting straight A’s or doing well at your job. So how Orenstein phrased it really hit home with me:

It doesn’t seem to be “having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time.

Anorexia claims another model

anorexia

5’8″ and 88 pounds. Attached to at least one online story about Ana Carolina Reston was an advertisement to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.

UPDATE: The above picture is not of Ana Carolina Reston. It appears that it has been photoshopped; it’s also worth pointing out that the “original” was photoshopped as well. I’m leaving the picture up because it’s representative of what anorexia can look like. If you’d like a non-photoshopped picture of anorexia, feel free to Google-image “anorexia” and you’ll come up with more than a few.

Like A Natural Woman, Part Due

First, I’d like to thank the many commentators on the previous post. There’s so much to comment on and clarify, that I figured it was time for another post on the subject. There’s some patterns I see being recreated through the discussions on physical appearance. Patterns we learn early and often. Pre-existing patterns that operate under the surface…..sub-conscious, semi-conscious, unspoken, contradictory, incoherent even. I’m interested in those patterns and unraveling them.

See, one of the lessons I learned early on as a cub was that women have to justify every. got. damn. thing. we do. We’re supposed to come up with some justification for the simplest activities, the basic fabric of our lives. We even have ready-made templates for the pantomimes we’re supposed to engage in. Single mothers (like me) are supposed to apologize for our singleness, explain our singleness, justify our singleness to all and sundry. We’re supposed to promise we didn’t mean it to be this way, that we did everything we could to do avoid that terrible fate, but it just couldn’t be helped. We are supposed to offer up the best made-for-Lifetime-TV movie script of our lives we can muster. Even for strangers. For anyone who questions us. There are pantomimes on just about every female-oriented subject under the sun.

Now, not everyone does this, of course. And even most who do don’t do so in every venue, or on every subject, for every audience. But this is a pattern, and it sure as hell isn’t limited to the feminist blogosphere. Who said we have to do this? How and why did so many women, women from so many different backgrounds, learn to perform what I like to call the Justification Pantomime? I don’t think I’m the only person who’s seen this. I don’t think I’m the only person who’s ever performed a pantomime, either.

And back on the other post—remember the landscapes? How could I have possibly forgotten:

  • Puritanism—the belief that this world is profane, so we must not enjoy it. We must live lives of self-denial, renounce the pleasures of the physical body and our senses

    • And that denial of sensuality is key when it comes to dissecting the wherefores and the whys of beauty standards and physical appearance. The desire to be sensual, to feel sensual, to indulge ourselves in the pleasures of sight, of sound, of smell, of taste, of touch—that desire has existed in human beings long before the institution of Sexism. And the burden of this denial disproportionately falls on women. After all, we’re the source of temptation, no? Our sensual desire to bite into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is what led to the Downfall of humanity, no? Female appetites, whether figurative or literal, are to be controlled. We’re even responsible for the controlling of male appetites.

    I want to expand on this. Lemme go back to where our paths converge, diverge, and cross us. Each of us, from where we stand, are going to have times where our paths converge with the pre-existing sexism, diverge with it, or cross it entirely—where we will get the neck hairs of sexists (both male and female) up without putting much, if any, effort into it.

    Back to Lubu’s short hair. It just happens to either diverge or cross with the predominant sexist paradigm where I live. But my wearing my hair short has fuck-all to do with feminist notions of what the Natural Woman looks like, and everything to do with sensuality. I enjoy the feel of my short hair, the fact I can run my fingers through it without getting them caught. I like the feel of the wind on my face and neck. I like not getting my eyeballs poked with sharp ends of hair.

    But that doesn’t conversely mean that long hair can’t also be sensual, or that other women don’t experience it as such. Long hair just happens to converge with the predominant sexist paradigm where I live. I know women who express some of their creativity through their hair. Again, folks were doing this before the rise of patriarchy. So, if we see this as “feminine” expression, or kowtowing to patriarchal standards of Beauty, aren’t we seeing it through sexist-colored lenses?

    I’m not aware of any formulae, any means test by which we can tease out just where the sexism ends, and where our natural selves begin. We don’t have much basis for comparison. But I know what my five senses tell me. And I know if I don’t enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like a fresh haircut, or hot food—I ain’t gonna get to enjoy too much. Every choice we make in regards to physical appearance—the collection of small choices, that is—is going to set certain assumptions up in the minds of others. Some right, some wrong, but there’s no avoiding it. Some folks see my short hair and think “dyke”. Some see my short hair and think “fashionable”. To some it says “young”. To others, “old”. It says a whole lotta shit I basically have no control over, because the interpretation lies in the eyes of the viewer. Not with me.

    So, since it seems we’re on the subject already, let’s talk about power. I used the word “choice” up above just now, and I’m not really comfortable with that word. I don’t think most of us have a lot of choices, realistically, even about something as inconsequential in the long run as appearance. Whether we emulate (consciously or unconsciously) sexist standards of Beauty, or resist (again, consciously or unconsciously) those same standards, our actions don’t give all of us, everywhere, the same advantage or disadvantage.

    See, something about Edith’s comment on the last post really resonated with me, and at the same time repelled me. Resonated, because I have at times been frustrated with the insistence on beauty. Something about the insistence that we have to be beautiful, along with intelligent, accomplished, serene, cheerful, upbeat, articulate, strong, assertive, wise, whatever…..beautiful too, on top of it? Why? If beauty is only skin deep, why does it have to be on the resume with all my other fabulous qualities, that obviously aren’t enough without it? (and shit, like I’ve got the other qualities locked, anyway!) And if Beauty comes in so many different forms (which incidentally, I believe), maybe “cheerful” comes in many different forms as well! Like, maybe my crabby ass is just “Uncoffeed Cheerful” in the morning, instead of crabby, hm? (Sorry, got carried away. This post is strictly stream-of-consciousness.) Seriously—when Beauty is set up in that manner, it makes me feel like it’s another hurdle to be jumped, instead something to indulge, to celebrate.

    Does the nod to beauty norms give everyone an advantage? Nahh, it doesn’t. Speaking of power, I stand on a relative bedrock of privilege when it comes to challenging beauty norms, because my job doesn’t require any nod to Beauty, other than not having visible dirt or smellable stench on my person. Soap and water is the only beauty regimen I have to follow to put a roof over my head and food in my belly. Others lack that certain luxury of snubbing dominant beauty myths. There are jobs that require, by custom if not by rule, the keeping of certain beauty rituals—and one abstains from those rituals at a financial risk. Not everyone is in equal position to bear the consequences of resistance—even a small resistance. Not shaving armpits—-how can that be such a big sacrifice? Easy—if it means your employer sees those hairy pits and thinks those pits are losing customers. Then its a matter of having to wear sleeves, even in summer. Or finding another job. In a place where you’ve never seen a woman with hairy armpits.

    Here’s what I’m bristling against, far more than concerns about beauty norms:

    The norm of falling into the same old, same old sexist trap of female self-sacrifice. Worshipping at the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Self-Denial and Sacrifice, swearing our fealty by never once claiming our own pleasure without first ensuring that our loved ones are all enjoying life much more than we are. Eating the chicken wing so someone else, always someone else, can get the thigh. Taking the last shower, so no one else has to go without hot water. When do we get to claim our pleasure, say, “I like it because I like it, dammit, what more do you have to know?”

    Replicating pre-existing sexist structure by centering the burden of resistance upon the backs of individual women.

    Ignoring context, including historical and cultural context. Rejecting the integration and intersection of identities. Not remembering we are all seekers, finding our way home.

    But I’ll also add—forgetting our anger. Our anger that we still have to negotiate these obstacles, and that we still haven’t found the common ground on which to even have these discussions, let alone act upon what we can and will learn from one another.

    Like A Natural Woman

    Seems like you can’t tour the feminist blogosphere for long before running up against some perennial, contentious arguments. Arguments whose origin is both without and within feminism. Arguments about: physical appearance/beauty, sex, birth control, birth plans, reproductive justice, breastfeeding, parenting, marriage or other partnerships, children, homekeeping, work, school/education, religion, family, age, Second Wave/Third Wave, how-the-hell-can-I-catch-a-wave when I don’t even know how to surf? And you can’t follow Lubu around the blogosphere without hearing at least one round of (all together now), “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

    Why are these disagreements so contentious? Easy. They mark exactly when and where you enter. Nothing will illustrate where your identities intersect faster than stepping into the ring of one of these arguments. They show where our paths converge, diverge, and cross us—individually and collectively. These paths are our past, present and future. And we walk on them with our own rhythm, at our own pace. The common thread in these arguments? Who is—or what constitutes—the Natural Woman? What would the Natural Woman look like and be like without patriarchy?

    ‘Nother words, these arguments are another field of power play. And there is no more frequent field of this play than on female bodies and female lives.

    Here’s my take on the landscape upon which these arguments are taking place:

  • Capitalism—that the presence or absence of capital defines us, gives us mobility, options, creates and justifies demands
  • Consumerism—that purchasing power can be a substitute for institutional power; that we can buy freedom, liberate ourselves in increments on the installment plan, buy into the illusion of chump change as power
  • Colonialism—the invasion and theft of land and peoples and the cultural appropriation and corruption of cultural philosophies, art, creations
  • Racism—the creation of “races” and the classification of humans along hierarchical lines according to “race”
  • Nature As Opponent or Subject—the idea that humanity must “fight” and “subjugate” the rest of the environment, rather than be and act as an intrinsic part of that environment
  • Hyper-individualism—that individual decisions don’t have the same effect as communal decisions even when writ large; that we stand alone, even in the presence of others
  • the Eternal Now—the lack of responsibility and/or stewardship toward future generations
  • Dualism—critical questioning and discernment which lend themselves more easily to concepts of moderation, balance, multiplicity fade in a prevailing atmosphere of all or nothing
  • One Truth—whether with Deity or without, the idea that there is One True Way (probably a legacy of patriarchal monotheism)

    • Feel free to add—hell, it’s Sunday morning and I’m only on my second cup of coffee. I’m putting forth these institutional power practices as the backdrop we work against—or with. See, I purposely left out Essentialism—the idea that everything has an “essence” that reveals its perfect expression.

    From the outside, feminism is often critiqued for giving a nod to multiplicity, for not being quick to strictly define and set forth Dogma, the better to separate the Sinners from the Saved. From the inside, too. From where I stand, multiplicity is our strength; multiplicity gives us the room, the skills, and the people to fight for our liberation on many fronts simultaneously. (Side note: liberation. Don’tcha just love that word? It wasn’t so long ago that we used the term “Women’s Liberation”. I like to reclaim that.)

    Occasionally, I participate in these threads, like the ones on menstruation….but shit, most of the time I avoid this like the bubonic plague, like with the “appearance” threads. Sometimes, a discussion ain’t just a discussion for some us—it’s a painful reminder of how close to the bone some subjects are, and how little relative power or privilege we have. It’s easy to assume there can’t be a Feminist Beauty until after the Revolution, when your version of beauty is being televised right now. Age enters into this too; I’ve noticed a distinct trend over the years of postmenopausal working class women—the women who would never get a manicure before, because it was “a waste of money” (ain’t that somethin’ we learn early—spending what little we have left after bills on ourselves as being a “waste of money”?!) and they wouldn’t last long without chips anyway, getting their nails done. Why? Because of painful splitting of their nails, down to the quick. The lacquer and wraps prevent that from happening—with the side benefit of looking pretty. Giving them the opportunity to feel pretty, in a world that says older women are inherently ugly. Women who’ve never had “pretty” hands, because their hands were too busy showing the effects of years of hands-on work, getting the chance to get compliments on their hands. Feminism damn well better have room for that.

    Frankly, I’d like to see every bone of contention in the feminism world start off with a blunt answering of the question: who holds the key to power here?, and then go from there. I got the impression from my brief look at the “appearance” threads that too many folks were answering that unspoken question, “the individual woman, as a consumer.” And that’s ludicrous.

    There is no Natural Woman. Only natural women. All of us. Whenever and wherever and however we enter.

    Baby take off your dress, oooh, yes, yes, yes

    I’ve been resisting writing about the New York Times’s Halloween costumes go sexy!” article, but it still is in the Times most e-mailed list almost a week after it was published, so here goes. (Salon’s covered it here.)

    In her thigh-highs and ruby miniskirt, Little Red Riding Hood does not appear to be en route to her grandmother’s house. And Goldilocks, in a snug bodice and platform heels, gives the impression she has been sleeping in everyone’s bed. There is a witch wearing little more than a Laker Girl uniform, a fairy who appears to shop at Victoria’s Secret and a cowgirl with a skirt the size of a tea towel.

    And there will be pictures! The reader can’t honestly be expected to just imagine these sartorial splendors, assembled from mere ribbon and polyester. We must have images, complete with sexy pouts and mock domination.

    Anyone who has watched the evolution of women’s Halloween costumes in the last several years will not be surprised that these images — culled from the Web sites of some of the largest Halloween costume retailers — are more strip club than storybook. Or that these and other costumes of questionable taste will be barely covering thousands of women who consider them escapist, harmless fun on Halloween.

    Well, let’s be certain to speak for all women who will opt to dress like Little Bo Peep Show (yes, that’s really a name of a costume). I’m sure that no woman has other motivations other than the ones prescribed to her by the New York Times.

    “It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning,” said Linda M. Scott, the author of “Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism” (Palgrave Macmillan) and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.

    Well, so much for my fond wish that a nice girl who dresses like a dominatrix (or is a dominatrix) can actually hold her head up high in the morning. Obviously, black leather and a riding crop just diminishes your self-worth so badly that you need the validation of a pseudo-holiday to be able to wear it.

    Carlos Mencia, the comedian, jokes that Halloween should now be called Dress-Like-a-Whore Day.

    Because women can’t wear sexy or revealing outfits without being whores. One of the things I do give the NY Times credit for is the fact that they don’t actually use the word slut. They use vixen and sexy, but those aren’t as culturally loaded as slut. Leave it to Mencia to bring down the level of discourse.

    Why have so many girls grown up to trade in Wonder Woman costumes for little more than Wonderbras?

    I’m sorry, have you *seen* Wonderwoman? Board shorts, a corset, and knee high red boots Wonderwoman? Just checking.

    “Decades after the second wave of the women’s movement, you would expect more of a gender-neutral range of costumes,” said Adie Nelson, the author of “The Pink Dragon Is Female: Halloween Costumes and Gender Markers.”

    Well, why? Frankly, this allusion to androgeny seems like a red herring. Women’s fashion certainly hasn’t moved towards gender-neutral content, and the overall sex appeal index of everyday clothing seems higher to me. I don’t have the sociological data to back it up, but the trend towards more revealing clothing isn’t exactly news.

    “Even though you’re in a costume when you go out to a party in a bar or something, you still want to look cute and sexy and feminine,” she said.

    So says the 28-year-old librarian in Milwaukee. (Where do they find these people?) I’m still not sure how looking cute, sexy, and feminine equates to Little Red Riding Ho’. I have no objection to playing with costuming or being a fun feminist, but why is it that being cute, sexy, and feminine means pandering to male sexual fantasies. There might be some truth to “all the girls walk by, dressed up for each other”, but there’s a difference between wanting to have a fun costume that looks good on you and being a va-va-voom Girl Scout.

    In fairness, the article does do attempt to explain the whys and wherefores of the trend towards Pimps ‘n Hos, excepting the pimps.

    In her book “Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality”, Deborah Tolman, the director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University and a professor of human sexuality studies there, found that some 30 teenage girls she studied understood being sexy as “being sexy for someone else, not for themselves,” she said.

    When the girls were asked what makes them feel sexy, they had difficulty answering, Dr. Tolman said, adding that they heard the question as “What makes you look sexy?”

    This is more than a little bit disturbing. If teenage girls are getting the message that a certain kind of outfit makes them look objectively sexy, that’s a distressing message to internalize. There’s no sense of agency here, that feeling sexy is something you do for yourself. If that’s a message that sticks with you to adulthood, it makes it much harder to think about sexy costumes as being subversive or taking a swipe at fairytale characters. The idea of owning a prison pinup outfit called JailBait just seems like another variation on “stripping for aerobic exercise is empowering!”

    Still, women may be buying racy outfits because that is all that is available. Ms. Getz said she wished there were more sexy men’s costumes on the market and that the lack of them is but further evidence of the gender double standard. “It’s just not as socially acceptable,” she said, adding that men feel comfortable expressing themselves with Halloween costumes that are “either crude or outrageous or obnoxious.”

    Well, duh. Being sexy (and dressing in ways that are cuturally identified as being “sexy”) is an activity for women. There aren’t any sexy costumes for men because there is no corresponding assumption that men either should or need to be sexy.

    Ms. Bodner of Cornell estimated that it will be about 30 degrees in Ithaca on Oct. 31.

    “We’re not just risking our dignity here,” she said. “We’re risking frostbite.”

    And there you have it: sex appeal is more important than your toes. I’m going to look for that guy dressed up as a priest to complain to.

    P.S. My all time favorite Halloween costume was my Feminine Mystique outfit: fifties dress, seamed stockings, pearls, heels, cardigan, martini glass, and bottle of Vicodin. It was also an excellent way to figure out who I wanted to talk to at parties.

    Hot sexy law school deans are waiting for you…

    Creepy indeed. A law gossip blog (who knew?) is soliciting nominations for the sexiest female law school dean. Because, you know, when you’ve clerked for the Supreme Court, graduated at the top of your class, been published dozens of times over, and worked your ass off to succeed in what remains a remarkably male-dominated (and remarkably white) field, it’s really important to make sure that you know your place as a pretty thing to be admired. Or torn apart, as is inevitable in these kinds of contests.

    Some of the nominations seem tongue-in-cheek and genuinely laudatory of the nominee’s accomplishments, using “sexy” in a Real Hot 100 kind of way. Others, though, aren’t quite so charming:

    “I apologize in advance for ruining your contest. After you put up this nominee, the vote won’t even be close. She will lead the pack right out of the gate, and she will continue to lead until the cows come home.”

    “So I’m sorry. But I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and watch someone other than Asha Rangappa win the title of Hottest Law School Dean in the United States. It would be a miscarriage of justice.”

    “Asha is nothing short of stunning — an overused word, kind of like ‘brilliant’ in the pages of ATL and UTR — but so, so true. She could be a model. When I attended Yale Law School with her (she was class of 2000), she was the best-looking woman in the entire school. Not just her year, but the whole damn place. Asha Rangappa, without question!”

    “I write to nominate Asha Rangappa in your beautiful law school dean contest. First, she’s a genius: Princeton, Yale Law, a Fulbright, a First Circuit clerk. Second, she’s totally badass: from 2002 to 2005, she worked in the FBI as a Special Agent, focusing on counterintelligence investigations in New York City. How cool is that?”

    “Third, and most importantly, Asha is simply gorgeous. There hasn’t been this beautiful a woman in federal law enforcement since Jennifer Lopez pretended to be a U.S. US Marshal in ‘Out of Sight.’ This South Asian beauty — with her milk-chocolate skin, lively eyes, Julia Roberts smile, and reddish black tresses — will demolish the rest of your field.”

    And the comments are… special. A nice mix of racism, sexism and male entitlement (“She’s smart (for a woman),” “None of these chicks are hot enough for my standards, which are the universal rules of who is and is not attractive,” and “Indian people smell like curry” just about sum it up). Everything we all love about beauty contests, and none of that “scholarship pageant” silliness. Rock on, David Lat — you’re a true rebel.

    via.

    Things I Have Learned This Week

    Body hair is the root of all feminism. ‘Strue! If you wax, you pull it out by the roots, and therefore you’re no longer a feminist and you have to turn in your Feminist Membership Card. Okay, maybe you can get it back if you stop waxing and let it grow back and you’re reallyreallyreally sorry about it and promise to wear only flannel shirts and workboots from now on. You can even watch Project Runway and work in an industry that supports the patriarchy, but if you leave your body hair alone — especially the hair on your hoohah — you can keep your card. In fact, you can even join the Feminist Police and raid those Korean nail salons to check for women getting Brazilian waxes and pedicures while in possession of a Feminist Membership Card.

    And shaving’s not going to save your ass, sister — you may think you’re getting away with something by leaving the roots in place and removing the visible parts of the hair, but the Feminist Police are onto you. Expect random pit-checks, and you better show some hairy legs when they come around.